Lives in Cricket No 37 - William Clarke

43 On 11 September a match was played ‘in a field of Mrs Chapman’s at the Trent Bridge’ (see Nottingham Review ) between Holme Lane and Mansfield. Holme Lane had William Clarke as a given man. The latter club overwhelmed Mansfield, scoring 44 and 93 against Mansfield’s 24 and 35. Clarke’s innings of 20 was the highest in the game – no one on the Mansfield side reached double figures. In the Nottingham Mercury the match is described as being ‘in a close adjoining Mrs Chapman’s Inn at the Trent Bridge’. On 5 December 1837 William Clarke, widower, innkeeper of Angel Row, Market Place, Nottingham, married Mary Chapman, widow, Trent Bridge Inn, Bridgford. The witnesses were Robert Jackson and Mary Singlehirst [sic]. It was just three months since the death of Clarke’s first wife. William Clarke’s father was given as John Clark, builder and Mary Chapman was given as daughter of Joseph Singlehirst [sic]. Clarke’s new wife was born Mary Ann Singlehurst, and baptised at West Bridgford Parish Church on 30 November 1788, the eldest of the four children of Joseph and Ann Singlehurst (née Horseley). The other three children were Edward (b 1797), Charles (b 1801) and William (b 1805). All three boys have some connection with cricket, their names appearing occasionally in local published matches; for example, when West Bridgford played Mr Samuel Chapman’s XI in 1822 William played for West Bridgford, whilst Charles and Edward appear for Mr Chapman’s XI. Mary Ann Singlehurst, then 22, had married Samuel Chapman, a 51-year- old bachelor, in West Bridgford Parish Church on 12 March 1811. In the trade directories of 1799 and 1814, Samuel Chapman is described as a blacksmith of Trent Bridge, but by 1818 he is a victualler and blacksmith of the Horse Shoes, Trent Bridge (or in other versions, the Three Horse Shoes). Samuel Chapman and Mary Ann had two children: these were Samuel Chapman, baptised in West Bridgford, 26 May 1812; and John, baptised in West Bridgford, 4 December 1814. Samuel Chapman was buried in West Bridgford churchyard on 24 November 1825, and the 1832 Trade Directory gives Mary Ann Chapman as living at the Bridge Inn, Trent Bridge, whilst Edward Singlehurst is a blacksmith of West Bridgford and William Singlehurst a farmer of West Bridgford. On his second marriage Clarke moved to the Trent Bridge Inn. West Bridgford was still a small village – the population in 1801 was 235 and in 1871 had increased by just two more inhabitants. Later, between 1871 and 1891 the village had a dramatic rise, the population increasing tenfold, then by 1914 to 13,000. In 1837 it comprised the Hall, the parish church and a handful of cottages around the church, a few gentlemen’s houses and scattered farms, together with the Trent Bridge Inn, formerly the Horse Shoes. The land in the village was owned by the Musters family of Colwick Hall, which stood on the north bank of the River Trent. The first bridge linking West Bridgford with the town of Nottingham was reportedly built in or about 924, but by 1838 the bridge, which had been reconstructed several times, was a multi-arched narrow stone structure: a new bridge was built in 1871 adjacent to the old one, which was demolished the Fate Takes a Hand